Perfect Nightmare

Chapter Twenty-five

Rick Mancuso handed his fake Mont Blanc pen to Ellen Fine, and watched disinterestedly as she read every line of the fine print on the listing agreement, knowing that in the end she would sign. This was a nice little listing; he wasn’t sure Ms. Ellen Fine and her daughter were going to be prospects for another house, but at least he’d make a nice commission on this one.

She hesitated, looking up, but before she could say anything, his cell phone rang.

“Sorry,” he said, pulled the phone from his pocket and looked at the caller ID. Instead of a single name, or just a phone number, four words were scrolling across the screen.

CAMDEN GREEN POLICE DEPARTMENT.

Crap.

Mark Acton had told him they’d be calling, but why did they have to call now, just as he was about to get this woman to sign on the dotted line?

He’d talk to them later.

Keeping his expression impassive, he switched the ringer to vibrate and dropped the phone back into his pocket. “Will you be relocating in this area?” he asked, his voice betraying none of the concern the phone call had caused.

Ellen Fine shook her head as a little blond girl — maybe five years old, he thought — appeared at the kitchen doorway.

“Mommy?” the child piped, sidling over to her mother while her eyes remained suspiciously on Rick.

“Hi, honey.” Ellen wrapped an arm around her little girl. “This is Mr. Mancuso. He’s going to help us sell our house.” “Hi,” Rick said, and held out his hand.

The little girl kept her own hands firmly behind her back. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Emily.” “You’re very pretty, Emily.”

The little girl smiled shyly at the floor.

“What do you say?” Ellen prompted.

“Thank you,” the girl whispered, her eyes still avoiding Rick's.

“Sweet little girl,” Mancuso said. Ellen frowned, glanced at Mancuso, and felt a sudden urge to end the meeting right then. A moment later, though, she remembered her financial plight, dismissed her misgivings about the agent, and signed the listing. “We’ll get a good price for this house, Ellen,” Mancuso went on. “You and Emily can—” His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and though he tried to resist it, he couldn’t help pulling it out and looking at the screen. The police again, and obviously not about to give up. “Sorry,” he said, throwing his new client an apologetic smile. He opened the phone and turned away from Ellen Fine. “Rick Mancuso.” “This is Sergeant Grant from the Camden Green police department, Mr. Mancuso. We’re investigating the disappearance of Lindsay Marshall.” The real-estate agent nodded as if the officer were in the room with him. “Listen, I’m with a client right now. Can I call you back in a few minutes?” He scribbled the sergeant’s name and phone number in his notebook, then folded his phone and tucked it back in his pocket. “I’m sorry,” he said, turning back. “Where were we?” “I think you were about to pitch us another house,” Ellen Fine said. “But I’m afraid we’ll be moving out of the area entirely.” “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“We’re moving to Missouri to live with my grandmom,” Emily said.

“Lucky her,” Rick said. He picked up his paperwork and put it in his briefcase. “I’ll get this right into Multiple and we’ll start showing it.” He stood up.

Ellen hoisted her daughter to her hip and walked him to the front door. “The sooner the better,” she said. “Thanks for your help.”

Rick opened the back door of his black Mercury and threw in his briefcase, then got into the driver’s seat, wondering how long he could postpone his call to the cops. Not long at all, he decided. Might as well get it over with. He pulled out his phone and punched in the numbers.

“Sergeant Grant,” a gruff voice responded after the first ring.

“This is Rick Mancuso.”

“Thanks for getting back to us so quickly,” the officer said, somewhat moderating his tone. “We’re just following up on a few things. You were at the Marshalls’ open house last Sunday?” “Mark Acton’s open house in Camden Green. Yes, I was there.” “You were there with clients?”

Rick frowned. “That was the plan, but they had to cancel.” “But you went anyway?”

“I was meeting them there, and they called at the last minute. I was already there, so I took another look at the place, with them in mind. And it’s perfect for them, by the way.” “You were at a broker’s open house there the previous Wednesday.” It was a statement, not a question, and Mancuso thought he detected an edge to the cop’s voice now. Where was this going? “Yes,” he said, remembering his father’s advice never to volunteer anything.

“And you went back again on Sunday by yourself?” Sergeant Grant pressed.

“Yes.”

“Have you taken your clients to see the house yet?”

“No,” Rick said, but the definite edge in Grant’s voice told him he’d followed his father’s advice long enough. “I called Mark to schedule a showing, but he said the house had been temporarily taken off the market because of what happened to the girl.” “What did you do after Sunday’s open house?”

Rick told himself this call was nothing personal. The police were just following up, calling everyone who had been at the open house. “Let’s see,” he said. “I dropped by the post office to get my mail, went to the grocery store, drove to my sister’s place to take her some ice cream, but she wasn’t home, so I went home and grilled myself a steak.” “Can anybody vouch for any of that?”

Rick’s heart began to pound. The post office had been closed — he’d just picked up the mail from his box.

He’d paid cash at the store.

His sister wasn’t home, and he lived alone — her ice cream was still in his freezer.

So he hadn’t talked with anybody. There was nobody to corroborate his story.

“Mr. Mancuso?”

“I–I guess not,” he finally said. “Unless maybe someone at the store remembers seeing me.” “And what time would that have been?” Grant asked.

Rick hesitated. “I’m not sure. Five? Five-thirty? I remember getting home in time for the six o’clock news.” Grant thanked him and hung up, but even after the phone went dead in his hand, Rick sat there, staring numbly through the windshield of his car.

Maybe he ought to stop by Fishburn's, he thought, and see who else the police had called.

And it wouldn’t hurt to show his face after leaving Ellen Fine’s place, either.

That was the other thing his father had always told him: You can’t be too careful.

“I heard we were the last to see her alive,” Tina McCormick said, tossing her blond hair in the way she thought was so sexy but that Dawn D'Angelo thought was just kind of slutty. Both of them, along with the rest of the cheerleading squad and their coach, Sharon Spandler, were sitting at a table in the cafeteria, facing the policeman who had called them all there.

“Well,” Andrew Grant said carefully, ignoring Tina’s flirting, “you were certainly among the last to see her.” “And we’re sure she’s still alive, Tina,” Sharon Spandler said, fixing her eyes disapprovingly on the girl. Tina tried to pretend she didn’t notice the coach’s glare, but reddened in spite of herself.

“I was the last to see Lindsay,” Dawn said. “We walked home together Sunday after practice. And she’s still alive,” she added, glowering at Tina. She could hardly believe Tina had said that. If the policeman and Ms. Spandler hadn’t been sitting with them, she would have thrown her water bottle at Tina. But the coach was there, looking almost as tired as she herself felt, and the cop was there, so she hadn’t. Not that doing anything to Tina would help her feel any better, Dawn thought. She hadn’t been able to eat since last Sunday night, when Mrs. Marshall had called, saying that Lindsay was missing.

And she couldn’t stop feeling it was her fault. If she’d only asked her stupid stepmother if Lindsay could come with her — or better yet, not asked at all and just brought Lindsay with her on Sunday night — then Lindsay would be fine, and everything would be good again, and none of them would have to be sitting here talking about her.

“I heard she ran away,” Becka Saunders said.

“I heard her parents were taking her to the city and putting her in a private school,” Heather Blaine offered.

Grant’s eyes swept over the group. “Anybody hear anything else?” Dawn sat silently as every rumor that had swept through the school was repeated, each of them with new embellishments. She sat with her arms crossed, and with every new theory that was aired, the dull ache in her belly grew worse.

And it would continue to get worse until she saw her best friend’s face again.

“Did Lindsay have a boyfriend?” Sergeant Grant asked. “Maybe somebody who didn’t go to school here? Somebody older? Somebody she didn’t talk about too much?” All the girls shook their heads.

“She was kind of hot on Zack Sorenson,” Tina McCormick said, “but I don’t think he even knew about it.” “They never went out?”

Tina shrugged, but Dawn rolled her eyes. “Zack is going with somebody,” she said, wishing Tina would shut up, since she barely even knew Lindsay.

“No boyfriends?” Sergeant Grant pressed. “Don’t you all have boyfriends?” The girls all nodded except Dawn. “Lindsay didn’t have a boyfriend,” she said firmly.

“At least not one you knew about,” Tina McCormick taunted.

“Is she gay?” Sergeant Grant asked, making a note of what the McCormick girl had said.

Dawn rolled her eyes. The other girls only giggled.

“What about drugs?” Grant went on.

The girls glanced at each other, and Dawn could see three of them blushing. “Not Lindsay,” she finally said. “Lindsay was as squeaky clean as you can get.” “Not as squeaky as you!” Tina McCormick threw in, and Grant began to wonder if Dawn D'Angelo knew Lindsay Marshall as well as she claimed she did. But when he looked at Sharon Spandler, the coach shrugged.

“I never heard any talk about Lindsay using,” she said.

Grant raised his brows noncommittally. In his experience, most of the teachers were as ignorant about kids’ drug use as their parents were. “So the thing that was upsetting her was that her folks wanted to move her to the city?” he asked, his eyes once more sweeping the group.

And once more it was Dawn D'Angelo who responded. “She was really upset about that. She didn’t want to go — she wanted to spend her senior year here, and be head cheerleader and then graduate with all the rest of us.” She glanced around at the other girls, who were nodding in agreement. “I mean, we all grew up together — she hated the idea of going someplace she didn’t know with a bunch of kids she didn’t know.” “How unhappy was she about that?” Grant asked.

“Very,” Dawn said. “Very, very, extremely.”

The other girls nodded again, and so did Sharon Spandler.

“Unhappy enough to run away?” the policeman went on.

A long silence fell over the group gathered around the cafeteria table — a silence that told Grant as much as anything the girls had actually said out loud.

They didn’t know.

They didn’t know anything at all.

Sergeant Grant took business cards from his shirt pocket and handed them around the table. “If you can think of anything, no matter how small, or if you hear something, call me, okay?” “Do you think she’s all right?” someone asked.

“I hope so,” he said, standing up and closing his notebook. The girls watched in silence as he turned away from the table and walked out of the cafeteria.

Sergeant Grant sat quietly for a moment in his warm car with his eyes closed. There were no red flags in this case.

No sign of forced entry to the home.

No hint of anyone who Lindsay might have gotten on the wrong side of — no boyfriends, no drug dealers.

Apparently no enemies at all.

But unhappy.

Very unhappy, and probably very angry at her parents.

He sighed, picked up his notebook, made a few notes about his interview with Lindsay’s friends, then radioed his office.

“I still think she’s a runaway,” he said. “We’ll keep our eyes open and keep talking to people, but I’m thinking she’ll show up by the end of the week. Give her some time to cool off.” Still, as he started his car and pulled away from the curb in front of Camden Green High, he wondered once more about that real estate agent. What was his name?

Mancuso — that was it. Rick Mancuso.

Something in his voice just hadn’t sounded right.